


Leave Me In Stitches

by EternalEclipse



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M, Post-Winter War (Bleach), Violence, mostly pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 08:08:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17260646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalEclipse/pseuds/EternalEclipse
Summary: Ichigo stares at Aizen's sealed form, wondering if it's over. Urahara knows that with the Seireitei, it won't be over until they're dead.





	Leave Me In Stitches

It’s over. It’s all over. And yet, Ichigo finds himself looking away as Aizen is sealed into such a fragile structure. His fists ball as he studies the ground on this plateau that did not exist before their fight. It won’t last, he thinks, forcing himself to look once at Aizen’s last form before turning to Urahara. It won’t last because nature won’t let it. Just like nature had no place for a living god of death.

“It had to be done,” Urahara says, meeting Ichigo’s eyes.

“What will be done with him?” Ichigo rasps out the question, sounding more like he’d been choking on saltwater rather than pure power.

“Whatever Central 48 decides.” Urahara shrugs easily, but tears that Ichigo doesn’t understand spring to his eyes. It’s over. But did he manage to do anything at all?

More of his shihakusho disintegrates with the remnants of the final getsuga leaving him, and Ichigo sags against the ground. There’s likely no point to wondering at questions he won’t want the answer to.

And, suddenly, it hits Ichigo like a spooked deer seeing headlights. Just today, he’s saved Orihime. He’s died, maybe twice now, even if his body’s healed up enough not to look like it. He’s fought, and bled, and he killed someone who was like a human for the first time. Ulquiorra wasn’t like a regular hollow, having been a Vasto Lorde and an arrancar. And he’d helped seal Aizen into this fate worse than death.

For better or worse, he was going to have to live with all of it.

For a wild moment, he thought about stealing one of Urahara’s memory modifiers when he wasn’t looking. Urahara would likely figure it out, but without any spiritual energy of his own, they’d work on him, and as long as he had a head start…

But that wasn’t his way. He glances back at Urahara, who’s staring at him patiently, like a hr just assigned Ichigo a difficult problem and was waiting for him to figure it out. Ichigo glances back at Aizen, can’t sustain it, and turns back to his sometime-mentor.

“What are you going to do now, Kurosaki-san?” Urahara asks lightly. Ichigo can see the weight in his eyes, the shadows he usually attributes to the hat, darkening the grey more than usual into a near-black.

Now, Ichigo knows. “I’m not going to let this stop me.”

“No?”

A raised eyebrow.

“Never.”

A promise.

“Even without your powers?”

Ichigo finally breaks his melancholy with a scowl. “I’ve never let that stop me before. I’ll do whatever it takes, Hat-and-Clogs. Shouldn’t it be obvious?” Ichigo gestures expansively around them, and Urahara concedes the point.

For all that his tone is academic, Urahara’s next question is not. “Do you have enough reiryoku left for a few flash steps?”

Ichigo pushes himself to a standing position. “I think so.”

He’s about to ask why when he sees Urahara smiling. The shopkeeper ambles up to the trio of melded swords that stand in place of Aizen. “If you want to avoid your friends for a bit longer, you’ll have to keep up,” he teases, picking up the seal and flash stepping east.

Ichigo forces himself to follow, despite the strain. He thinks of his friends, still in the abandoned town. His father, unconscious on the edges. Yes, they’ll be safe just a bit longer. And until then he can pretend this is exhaustion from using so much reiatsu, not because Shiro and Zangetsu… Not because the last of Mugestu’s edges vanished off of his body.

He stumbles, mind thinking he’s going faster than his leftover reiatsu can handle, but keeps on going. He trusts Urahara. If there’s anyone who he’s willing to hear out after all of this, it was going to be him. Eventually, they reach a small clearing that Ichigo knows doesn’t exist in the real Karakura, not far from where the Shoten would stand. He stops just short of where Urahara is tinkering with something. Just as he’s about to ask, a senkeimon shimmers into existence.

Ichigo’s vision started hazing over as he stepped towards it, a sure sign of his exhaustion from the fight. He’s glad that senkeimon are straight paths and that Urahara’s bright hair gives him something to follow, or he might stumble back into the dark gloom of the dangai walls. One step, and another, left foot in front of right, in front of left. At some point the scenery changes and they’re in the Shoten’s basement, though Ichigo hardly notices. He collapses against a boulder, taking deep breaths, and just feeling as his reiatsu exhaustion tugs at the familiar places in his soul.

Ichigo closes his eyes against the sun, just for a moment. He feels himself sliding against the rock so that he was sitting, leaning against it. And then—there was something his shoulder. Ichigo’s eyes fly open and he reached back for his disappeared sword before he realizes that it’sjust Urahara. “Urahara-san? How long has it been?”

It turns out that Benihime’s sword-cane sheath was what had awoken him. The hat was still gone, though, as was the fan. Urahara doesn’t need either of them to make his face undreadable.

“Less than two hours since we left the fake Karakura town. I needed some time to make some final adjustments to Aizen’s seal.”

Ichigo takes a deep breath, immediately being weighted down by his success—and his failure. “So, that’s it then.”

“No.”

Urahara stands and walks several paces away. “Did your sword tell you the mechanics of your final technique?”

“Mechanics?” Ichigo straightens his spine, forcing himself to stand. “What are you talking about?”

“The Final Getsuga Tenshō isn’t unique to you. It’s been passed down within a certain branch of the Shiba Family. In Soul Society, it was regarded as a suicide technique, because of the difficulty of surviving the destruction of the part of the soul that houses zanpakutō spirits.”

“So Zangetsu and my hollow—they’re dead? How does that work?”

A small smile lit Kisuke’s face. Approval. If Ichigo didn’t felt so empty, he would have scowled in return. “That’s what Soul Society got wrong.”

“What are you saying? Is there a way I can get them back?”  The words nearly run together in Ichigo’s haste to get them out into the open.

Kisuke watched calmly, tapping Benihime against the ground as Ichigo’s heartrate picked up. Ichigo couldn’t imagine what such a thing would entail. His soul was already a shinigami, and a hollow. That hadn’t changed because of the final getsuga.

“Given enough time, the Shiba who used the technique have been able to start hearing their spirits again. It usually takes at least a decade, usually several, according to the research that has been done.” Urahara tapped Benihime against his hand. “Although, with your human body, who’s to say. They may not come back to you naturally until your death.”

Ichigo feels his heart skip a beat as he processed that. “You think you can get them back sooner?” He guessed.

Urahara tips his head down, so that if he’d been wearing his hat it would have covered his eyes, though without it Ichigo could see a glint of determination. “There’s a chance. It’s dangerous, but it’s possible.”

“You know what I think about that.” Ichigo’s chin juts up.

“If it fails, and you aren’t destroyed, you could become another hogyoku,” Urahara warns.

“I won’t let that happen.” Ichigo vows. “And I owe Zangetsu and even that hollow to try anyway. What do I have to do?”

“Just stay there, and it’ll hurt less if you don’t move.” Urahara sinks to his knees. Benihime’s sheath was discarded, her naked blade laid across his lap.

“ _Bankai: Kannonbiraki Benihime Atarame.”_

A great pressure built up, and a figure sort of draped itself into being behind Urahara. Ichigo gasps, mostly out of need for air—the reiatsu was pushing him into the ground. He falls more heavily against the rock, chest heaving, trying to watch what Urahara is doing but also forcing himself to remember how to breathe.

And then Urahara reaches an arm towards him, and Ichigo screams.

His flesh was being rent from his bones, his bones pulled apart to reveal squirming muscle, his lungs insisting they were breathing despite the fact that they _couldn’t be_ , not through all of this. He didn’t know how he was going to be able to survive this. A laugh nearly bubbled up—after everything, _this_ was how he died. At the hands of a trusted friend. At least Urahara would have the grace to send him on to Soul Society instead of letting him become defenseless hollow-bait, he tamped down on a mad laugh only because his pain tolerance was at its limits.

He dimly recognized that whatever was happening, its target must be his soul sleep and the tiny remains of his soul chain, because the rest of his body stopped moving when he reached them. It didn’t get any easier to bear, but at least it wasn’t any more difficult.

And then—it was like when Rukia stabbed him through with her zanpakutō, when Byakuya did it again with his, when Urahara cut his soul chain, when he fought Kenpachi, when he fought Ulquiorra. It was like death. It was indescribable.

Slowly, by inches, he felt like he was coming back together. Mustering the will to look at his chest, Ichigo saw that less of it had moved than it had felt like, although there were new scars over where his soul chain and soul sleep would be. He breathed in, surprised by the relative lack of pain, before looking back at Urahara. He didn’t even remember when he looked away.

Benihime is sealed again on Urahara’s lap, but the man doesn’t look away from her even after she was sealed back in her sheath.

“They’ll ache for a while, but if it was successful, once your reiryoku is restored, you’ll be able to hear them again.”

Ichigo pushed himself more upright against the boulder. “What was that?”

Urahara meets his eyes. “Aizen was a monster created by the policies of the leadership of the Seireitei, the nobles and the Thirteen Squads. A hundred years ago, those policies ceased to be my responsibility, when they came against the the Vizards and myself. And, despite what some would have you think, they were never yours.”

Ichigo scowled and cut in. “So what, then? If I hadn’t done anything, my family would have died! And so would everyone else in Karakura! I wasn’t gonna let them die when I could do something about it!”

He couldn’t read the look on Urahara’s face.

“And that’s why they had you do it, even though that sacrifice wasn’t yours to make. That, and the Seireitei doesn’t like anything that’s not exactly like them, especially if they can’t completely control you. And you’ve proven that they can’t control you several times over. If you didn’t have your powers afterwards, you wouldn’t be able to defend yourself from whatever they devised to fix that. If they didn’t just kill you outright.”

Ichigo was sure he was gaping. “They wouldn’t have killed me, I helped them!”

But even as he said it, he thought about it again, and doubts began to rise. The Bounts. And what Kon had said when he’d shown up, that the Gotei had slated him to be destroyed on account of being ‘defective’. And the way Urahara had tried to take him away.

“Don’t be naïve, Kurosaki-kun.”

 “So why did you help me? What’s the catch?”

Urahara stood his ground. “The Seireitei isn’t happy with you, or any of your allies. They were probably hoping that more of you would die. Instead, your human friends are relatively safe between Hueco Mundo and the fake Karakura town, and all of the Vizards survived the battle. Hiyori was still unstable when I left, but you know what hollow healing can do, so unless they inhibit that, she should fully recover.”

“So they’ll come after us?”

“Yes. You, your sisters, your friends. The Vizards, for showing themselves.” He pauses. “Myself, Tessai, Ururu, and Jinta as well.”

“How are you so calm about it?”

“Have you ever known me to not have a plan, Kurosaki-kun?” Urahara stands, and breaches the last of the distance between them. “Of course, the fact that your mind survived the reconstruction process helps significantly. Aizen’s hogyoku state makes a powerful enough focus for anything we’ll need it for. It would have been a shame if you’d joined him. And, thanks to the dangai, we have a few days in here before the rest of the shinigami catch up. That’s enough time for you to recover your reiatsu so that we can get started.”

Urahara held out the hand that wasn’t holding Benihime. Ichigo studied it for a long moment.

“Why did you fight Aizen, then, if he was the Gotei’s problem?”

“Aizen wasn’t a threat to the Gotei, not directly. He was a threat to the Balance. If he had truly ascended to the Soul King’s realm, he would have used that power to tear the three worlds apart. From my understanding of your final technique, you know what that would do.”

“You don’t usually explain this much,” Ichigo grouses.

Urahara tips his head up in response, daring him.

But Ichigo did get it. There was something he’d felt in that last form. Aizen had called it transcendence. Ichigo just felt, more than ever, how he was just a cog in the universe’s machine. Small, but like he’d had his place, something he was needed for but also something that was one tiny piece of the miasma of existence. He met Urahara’s eyes for a long moment. “Fine. Let’s protect Karakura from the Seireitei. How bad could it be?”

* * *

Isshin studies Ichigo over the rim of his cup. “I had it all planned out, you know, for if the Gotei came after me. Without your powers, they couldn’t track you, and there was money for you to get the girls to safety.”

“And what about you?” Ichigo presses.

Ichigo had finished healing as much as he would fairly quickly. There are new scars all across his chest that he was assured couldn’t be fixed further, but they’re easily covered and don’t pull nearly as badly as he’d been expecting. He’d heard Zangetsu whisper in his ear several nights before, and with any luck the hollow would be chattering his ear off again. Only two days had passed outside the Shoten in that first week, but it was enough to hear that the Vizards had all made it, and to get them back to the real Karakura. Things were going about as well as they could.

“I was a Captain,” Isshin shrugs. “I knew what I was getting into. But it was more important that you would be safe. And now…well.”

“The girls already are growing up without Mom. Better that they have the both of us too. And I like it better this way, knowing what's going on and being able to deal with it.” Ichigo replies. He drinks the last of his tea, and sets it on the table.

There was an explosion from elsewhere within the shop. The barriers didn’t react, and neither did the bond he had with the Aizen-hogyoku, so Ichigo presumed it was fine, even if it was fun to watch his father flinch. There was probably an experiment going on somewhere.

“Really?”

“Definitely.”

“Really?” Isshin wiggled his eyebrows, shattering the serious tone of the conversation.

Ichigo touches his chest, where he will forever bear the marks of Urahara fixing his soul. He’d once told the man, shortly after everything settled down the first time, that if he trusted him with his soul, his heart wasn’t much more to ask. He’d gotten a patient _‘that’s not how this works’_ look, even if he didn’t agree. He fixes his father with the same look he’d given Urahara then. “Absolutely.”

**Author's Note:**

> I give. This is for the scars prompt. I'm sick as I finished it and edited it, so if there are typos/weird tense issues pls pm me here or on discord or tumblr and I'll fix it. Hope you enjoyed!


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